Is God pro-life?

Before we get to the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” in Exodus 20:13, we need to say a few words about God as a killer. We must acknowledge that by the time Israel arrived at Mt. Sinai to receive the law, God had killed many people – including all the firstborn of Egypt and all of Pharaoh’s army. 

The question is, does God have the right to do what He prohibits human beings from doing? 

Recall that long before we get to Exodus in the biblical narrative, God had also wiped out Earth’s entire human and animal populations in the worldwide flood—except for Noah and his family. He later destroyed all the men, women, and children of Sodom and Gomorrah—except for Lot and his daughters (Genesis 19:29). Is God pro-life?

As Creator, God is sovereign over the things He has made. Since He grants His creatures life, He also has the right to take it away (Gen. 2:7, 1 Samuel 2:6, Psalm 104:29-30). When He does either of these things, our response should be like Job's: “Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

God is the righteous Judge of all the earth (Gen. 18:25; Ps. 24:1, 47:1, 67:4, 82:8). When He kills a human being it’s not murder but the just penalty for sin. The Flood in Noah’s day was justified because of mankind’s rampant violence and corruption; the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was righteous because of the vile wickedness of those cities. 

While scripture depicts some human deaths as being the direct result of particular sins, it also reveals God’s common grace in sometimes allowing very wicked people to live long lives (Ps. 73:3-4). 

“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.” —Romans 6:23

We’re all under a sentence of death because we’re all sinners, yet God continues to create life and wants us to choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19-20). He doesn’t want anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:9-10) and offers eternal life through His Son. No one is more pro-life than God. 

God makes a killer law-giver and judge

Although mankind is made in His image, individuals have not been granted the absolute authority over life and death that God has. Human governments, such as the Pharoahs of Moses' day, have the authority to wage war or execute judgment (including capital punishment), but they are still accountable to God. 

In Exodus 2:11-20, we have the record of Moses killing an Egyptian who was beating up an Israelite. According to what we’ve seen in Genesis about murder, this was improper vengeance. It did not win Moses the respect he sought. Pharaoh and the man’s kinsmen avengers were within their rights to seek Moses’ life in retribution; God was both just and merciful to sideline him forty years in the desert until that Pharaoh died. 

Moses had violated God’s design for human beings by committing murder, yet through God’s grace he is now remembered as a great leader. Despite having done a terrible thing, God's grace was evident in his lifetime. He was allowed to commune intimately with God (Ex. 33:11). 

God's sovereignty and the sanctity of human life

In God’s dealings with both Moses and Pharaoh in the early chapters of Exodus, we see God upholding the sanctity of human life and exercising sovereignty over it. God threatened both of them with death if they did not obey. He demanded that Pharaoh release His people from slavery and that Moses circumcise his son: 

“Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me. But if you refuse to let him go, indeed I will kill your son, your firstborn.” Now it came about at the lodging place on the way that the Lord met [Moses] and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and threw it at Moses’ feet…. So He let him alone. —Exodus 4:22-26

God wanted Pharaoh to let His people go; once the circumcision was complete, God let Moses go! 

When the time came for the 10th plague, not only were Egyptian firstborns in mortal peril with God but so were those of the Israelites. (Ex. 11:4-8, 12:12-33) There was no avoiding this plague for Egypt; they had used up multiple opportunities for repentance by this time. God did, however, differentiate between the two nations by giving Israel a way to spare their children. As with Noah ark and Lot’s flight from Sodom, if Israel hadn’t obeyed God by painting their door frames with the blood of perfect lambs, their firstborn sons would have died and they would have been mourning as grievously as the Egyptians. 

Israel will commemorate Passover each year after this, not in order to continue preserving their lives but to remember how they were saved. From the night of Passover onward, all firstborn males would belong to the Lord (Ex. 13:11-15). Firstborn animals would be killed in sacrifice to God, or redeemed by the death of a lesser animal; God would take the tribe of Levi in exchange for all the firstborn sons of Israel (Numbers 8:14-19). In this way Israel would remember their debt to God and the great loss of Egyptian lives.

Summary: God is pro-life in that He creates and gives life, even to people who don’t follow Him. He creates human life “in His image and likeness” and wants all of us to choose life by having faith in Him. 

God is also pro-life in that He demands His image bearers treat each other well, and in the fact that He requires an accounting for every human death. He is thus our standard for what it means to be pro-life, and we can always be sure He is more pro-life than any of us are.

Next: God is accused of being anti-life

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Related: God is gracious to forgive people who have had abortions

Image credits:
Pestilence—Death of the Firstborn, William Blake, 1805
Lamentations over the Death of the First-Born of Egypt, Charles Sprague Pearce, 1870s.